I remember literally THROWING AWAY my NES stuff in high school. The console itself wasn't working, so my borther threw it out. We didn't see much need for the games without the console (and I was big into the SNES, and TG16) so I threw those away as well. Nothing super rare or anything, just the classics such as mario, zelda, contra, final fantasy, etc.... Now that I collect I rue the day I trashed that stuff. Although we didn't keep our stuff in the best of shape so it was no big loss.

at least that's what I try and tell myself